The World That Might Have Been
by Empress of Slothdom
Summary: Revenge, betrayal, confusion, anger. A new journey begins, with a less than glorious start. Rating for language, violence, mild KH2 spoilers, and anything else I feel like.
1. Raindrops

Here, in the World That Never Was, it always rains. Even the lightest shades of grey seem almost black in the incessant downpour. Even the purest of hearts gives in to at least the appearance of darkness here. It has always been like that here, and it will always be so, until the end of everything. It is simply the way things are.

In the midst of the rain, there sits a girl. She is smiling and humming to herself, although her eyes are closed against the falling drops, an unwise idea, even now that most of the Organization members are gone. Her robes are soaking wet and dark, dark grey. She would be indistinguishable from the darkness if not for the garnish neon lighting reflecting off her blonde, blonde hair. Some people said she resembled Naminé, and wondered if perhaps there was some connection. There wasn't, though, to the best of her knowledge. They were just two beacons of light in a world without any.

The girl opens her eyes and looks upwards, towards the towering clouds, towards the empty space where once, the heart shaped moon hung. She would show them. All of them. When she was done, the Organization would beg her to join them, hells, lead them. Maleficent would be a children's story by comparison, the Keyblade nothing but an oversized trinket.

Water streams down her face. Raindrops. Always raindrops. In the World That Never Was, there are no tears.

The girl extends her hand from the protective covering of her sleeve, proving the underside of her robe to be palest silver. At her call, a portal of swirling shadows rises out of the wet cobblestones. She steps into, and opens her heart to, the darkness.

A/N- Short, I know. Believe it or not, this isn't a self-insert fic. I promise. Well, what do you think? There's more where this came from, but I'm not sure I should bother posting it. Lemme know your opinion.


	2. Adventures

Another day dawned in Hollow Bastion. And up to greet it, with the utmost regret, was a girl with bright blue hair leaning on a giant shuriken. She sighed as the sun peaked its orange edge over the horizon. Another day, another adventure- that was the way it was supposed to be. None of this day after day standing guard on the wall, waiting for a threat that had come and gone. And anything that remained, the computer could take care of.

Teela wished she could be down in the city with Yuffie and Tifa. She was sure they at least were having fun. But here was where she was supposed to be, and she'd be damned if she'd disobey Leon. She absent-mindedly twirled her shuriken, a threatening gesture indeed, although not intended as such. Her weapon flashing in the sunlight would have alerted any enemy within five miles of her presence. Her wandering mind would have easily allowed any such beings to quietly scale the large walls.

In her defense, however, her quick reflexes and steady battle skills would give her enough time to sound the town's alarm system manually, before the computer could even have time to notice a disturbance. She would knock many of the creatures off the stones to a deadly drop, and those few that stayed on would feel the wrath of her blue tinted shuriken. Soon after the alarm, she would be joined by Cloud, Leon, Yuffie, Tifa, and any other available warriors. With their help, the town would be mostly cleared of the threat, thought by so many to no longer exist.

But the numbers of the enemy are overwhelming. The defenders would stand little chance, as wave after wave of dark and twisted beings pour into this place, so newly cleansed. The girl known as Teela would never see the giant shadow incarnate come up behind her. All she would see would be the stones of the place she called home rush past her, and the well of darkness from which this menace sprang come up to meet her.

She closed her eyes and plunged head first into the darkness. Another day, another adventure, right?


	3. Time

There are no working clocks in the Underworld. They all run backwards, or forwards at the wrong speed, or are stuck at odd times like thirteen minutes past five. Alain sighed. There was no way to tell how long he had been standing here, waiting on that goddamn ferryman. But here he was, same as every day. Or was it everyday? Maybe it was several times a day. Maybe it was once a century. It didn't really matter, he decided. He had to wait for… What was her name?

He froze in his idle pacing along the riverbank. He couldn't have forgotten her name. It was I… E… Ygraine! That was it. Ygraine. And he had to wait for her to come home, because she couldn't possibly be dead. It just couldn't have happened. He couldn't have been the only one to survive. He was closest to the blast. Wait… He shook his head. No. He had been the only one _not_ to survive. That was it. Ygraine was alive. He wasn't. Which was odd, because being dead, as far as he could tell was exactly the same as being alive, just in a different place.

He was still corporeal. Still ate, although this he regretted. Most of the food was terrible. Was still mind-numbingly bored, without his friends …_Ygraine_…, or his spellbooks. Still slept, although, again, this he did as little as possible. He wasn't sure how much pain the dead could feel, but he didn't want to find out on the receiving end of some of the more creative pranks pulled in the Underworld. Still wore his glasses and now slightly singed robes. Oh what he wouldn't give for a clock that worked! Even an hourglass!

By now Alain wished he hadn't been so abrupt when turning down some of the other kids …_Or could they really be called kids?_… who were going to some sort of party. It had to be better than standing on the banks of this fucking river for the rest of eternity. The ferryman was never coming. Ygraine was never coming. Nothing would, nothing _could_ happen in this place, this place without time. Alain didn't even notice the sluggish waves swirling around his ankles. He had no memory of the murmured incantation that made its way to his lips. "_Nido to aenu hito ni basho ni, Mado wo akeru…" _A wall of black and purple flames rose out of the river to surround him. He would come back to check another time.


	4. Names

It was wonderful, Wonderland was. Here, you could be anyone you wanted. No one would question you if you introduced yourself as Beth one day, and Mary the next, claiming to have no memory of ever knowing a Beth, or making the acquaintance of the person you were addressing, before. Names, personalities, reality didn't matter here.

Ashleigh smiled. It was going to be a good day. She just knew it. As she buttoned the last black button on the high collar of her stiff purple party dress, she nodded. Yes, today was a fantastic day to be an Ashleigh. She stood up, gradually adjusting to her clunky platform heels. Grace never wore shoes at all. Or rather, she never wore her own shoes.

It was, of course, an un-birthday party. It was hard to say whose, though. It was almost always _someone's_ un-birthday, and whether they wanted it or not, they got a party. Ashleigh hoped there would be someone new there. She wasn't quite so introverted as Josie. Another smile, slightly cute, slightly mysterious. She had arrived. The Hatter answered the door, but not until after she had left herself in. It was already a wild party, and Ashleigh intended to further that state.

She started by introducing herself to a quiet, frowning boy with dark eyes. "Hi, I'm Ashleigh." She pulled him up and began to dance with him, although not necessarily the music, before he had a chance to introduce himself. It was better that way, really.

A cat came up and entwined himself in her legs.

"We need to talk, Wendy," he murmured. _Not many cats can murmur_, Ashleigh thought.

She pushed the boy away, already forgotten. "My name is Ashleigh," she told the cat.

"Well then, we need to talk, Ashleigh." He sauntered out through the crowd. AshleighGraceJosieMaryBethWendy followed him. They wound their way through the forest, ignoring the solicitations of the flowers, until the cat reached a seemingly unimportant spot. "I just thought you might find this interesting." He gestured towards a dark hole in their surroundings. Ashleigh wouldn't have noticed it if he hadn't shown her, but now that she saw it, it was all she could see. Its slowly moving shadows and textures matched her dress perfectly. "Isn't it pretty?" the cat asked. Ashleigh didn't turn around to see the crescent moon smile he slowly dissolved into. She walked straight forward into the hole, and wondered what her new name would be.


	5. Pride

Many fierce predators roam the Pride lands. So many, that some even double as prey. But not the lion. Never the lion, rulers of the savannah, noblest of creatures. Nakita held her head up in pride, startling her intended prey. She growled to herself. That was what she deserved for forgetting herself while on the hunt. There would be hell to pay if she came back to Pride Rock without a kill. This in mind, she settled down in the grass to wait again. She wouldn't let her pride down.

The sun was just setting. Perfect. A low rumble of satisfaction escaped Nakita's throat. A herd was approaching, although she couldn't tell what of yet. Her eyes narrowed in an attempt to utilize her superior night vision, then widened in shock. How _dare_ they return to the Pride lands? She'd put those scrawny dogs in their place.

Nakita was halfway through her leap towards the hyena pack when she noticed a larger, misty figure slightly off to the side. Her resolve faltered, but she completed the attack regardless. Catching a now-dead hyena in her mouth, she sprinted back towards home.

"He's back," Nakita panted after dropping the carcass at Simba's feet. "Scar."

Simba stared at her for a moment. "Nakita-" He paused. This wasn't Nakita's idea of a joke any more than it was his. But it also shouldn't be possible. "Where? When?" he asked finally.

"The northern end of the Pride lands. A large pack of hyenas is roaming around, and he's with them."

Simba nodded. "Nala, alert the lionesses. I'll handle Scar, but I want the hyenas found and taken care of. Don't let any of the children go. The last thing we need is them getting hurt." He frowned. "That includes you, Nakita."

"But- but!" She nudged the dead hyena at her feet. "I'm not a child."

"Do not disobey me." Simba let out a low roar, and Nakita bowed her head in submission. She stalked off to her own den, fuming.

Lying on the stone floor of her shared den, Nakita thought. Her den mates were out, hunting the hyenas. And here she was, doing nothing, when she was the one who had found out in the first place! She gnashed her teeth in frustration. All she wanted was to make her family proud. And she would. All of them. She sprinted out of her den towards where she had attacked the pack, determined to do _something_, if a little uncertain as to what.

The pack found her before she could figure it out. Snarling, she charged into their midst, for lack of a better plan. She tried to bite into one, inflicting maximum damage, only to realize that _this_ was not a hyena. It looked like a hyena, but it certainly did not feel or taste like a hyena. Nakita spat out the dark purplish liquid that accumulated in her mouth. Out of the puddle swirled another of the shadow hyenas. They surrounded her. Buried her. She sank into the shadows.


	6. Where They Went

The mansion in Twilight Town smelled, Xertheah thought, of dust. She disapproved. Things should smell of lemon-limey freshness and citrus and vanilla and other clean scents. Not of dust. But there was no other place to go, if she was to do what she had planned. She would be needing the information harbored in the supercomputer in the mansion's basement.

Her long robe, an imitation of the Organization's in dark grey, left a swishing path through the dust and dirt on the floor, as the heels of her tall black boots clicked down the stairs to the concealed room. So this was where Roxas's world had been created. She sighed. She had been rather fond of number thirteen. He was a nice kid, once you got to know him. Which, of course, had been the problem all along. The reason he had left, the reason she had never been allowed in at all. They were just too _nice_. Xertheah shook her head. That was beside the point. She was here now, about to do this, and that was the important thing.

After a minute spent puzzling over the controls, the blonde Nobody managed to pull up video footage of Sora in Twilight Town. She settled down in the room's only chair and watched as he roamed the town, met up with Roxas's friends from the imaginary world, caught the train to Yen Sid's. The kid was good, she'd give him that much, after seeing him obliterate Heartless left and right. And she did have a bit of a thing for spiky haired guys. "Yes," she murmured, "you'll be the first."

The Princesses were safe, which is to say, untouchable. The Heartless and lesser Nobodies had all been killed or left too weak to present any sort of threat, much less gather enough hearts to unlock Kingdom Hearts. And yet, that was the only way Xertheah could think to prove that she was good enough. And, perhaps, a chance to bring back the man she had loved.

After two years of searching through the library of the Castle That Never Was, she came across a footnote. It offhandedly mentioned someone, _someones_, called the _Princes_, in much the same context as the rest of the book talked of the Princesses of the Heart. All it said was that they too were seven in number, and she, the reader, would know them by the strange weapons they bore. Strange weapons… A giant key was pretty strange, wasn't it? So Xertheah had joined to Twilight Town in hopes of learning more. Now all she needed was a way to find the fabled Keyblade Master, or, better yet, contact him, draw him to her.

Ashleigh came to lying on the floor of a place she had never seen before. It certainly wasn't Wonderland, though. She wasn't so sure what she thought of that. New places were always fun, but what if she didn't make it home in time? Time for what, she didn't know, but surely there was something she needed to do back there, right? This, however, she brushed aside for the moment. Now was the time to figure out where 'here' was, not worry about why it wasn't where she remembered being last.

A quick glance around the room she was in confirmed that it was entirely white. Pictures that appeared to have been done drawn a gifted, but young, child decorated the walls. Ashleigh picked herself up and walked around the room, examining each sketch in turn. Most of them were of the same person, a boy with crazy brown hair and a giant key.

"Hmmm… I wonder what it's a key to." the girl who, for today, called herself Ashleigh mused.

But there were also pictures of other people. A tall boy with long silver hair, which somehow failed to make him seem in anyway feminine. A pale girl with red hair and a cute smile. "Wait. Is that a duck?" It was. Wearing a shirt, and holding a staff. Along with a dog, walking upright. In some of them, a breezy island was depicted, with clear water and shady palm trees.

All of these were grouped together. But there were more pictures off to one side. These showed a pale blonde girl, smiling shyly at a boy who looked almost, but not quite, like the one with the key, or an older, but still not old, redhead grinning in confidence at the same boy. In the latter picture they both wore heavy black robes that Ashleigh thought she recognized, although she had no idea where from.

When she realized she had made it all the way around the room, she turned on her heel and headed for the only door. Maybe there was more interesting stuff to be found.

Nakita was angry. In fact, she was furious. Livid, even. What were these, these _things_, these five digit appendages in place of her beautiful strong paws? And the limbs they were attached to were not made for walking at all. She had only one pair of legs, and these long and fragile compared to her powerful feline ones. What had happened to her? Where was she? She prowled around the small room, looking for a way out. There was a large square space on one side through which she could see open skies, but it was blocked by a clear substance between a lattice of thin wooden beams.

"Dammit!"

She turned around only to find what was, by all appearances, a large slab of wood. Nakita batted at the round metal ball protruding from said slab in frustration. There was a loud click and the door swung open. Nakita gave a low growl somewhere between satisfaction and irritation before making her way out of the room.


End file.
